Creating a Silverlight 2.0 Application that Consumes a WCF Service - Adding a Project
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Now we need to develop a Silverlight 2 application which consumes our regular WCF Service.
The following are the necessary steps to get started:
Open Visual Studio 2008.
Go to File || Add || New Project (to the existing solution).
Select “Silverlight” as the "Project Type," “Silverlight Application” as the "Template," “DemoSL” as the "Name" and finally click “OK.”
You will be provided with an “Add Silverlight Application” dialog.
Select “Add a new Web to the solution” (first radio button).
Select “Web Application Project” as the "Project Type," “DemoSLWeb” as the "Name" and finally click on “OK” (as shown in Fig 09).
If you observe the “Solution explorer” now, you will find two projects. One is the Silverlight application itself and the other is simply a web application which is used to render and test the Silverlight application developed.
Now that we've created a new Silverlight application, we need to add a reference to the WCF Service we developed earlier.
Using “Solution Explorer," right click on the “DemoSL” project and “Add Service Reference” to “DemoEmpService” as shown below (Fig 10). Rebuild the solution.
Modify the “ServiceReferences.ClientConfig” in “DemoSL” as follows (Fig 11). Rebuild the solution.
Developing a Silverlight 2 application to consume WCF: Writing code
Drag and drop a button, label and a Datagrid from the toolbox onto the Silverlight design surface. Modify your code so that it looks like the following:
<UserControl xmlns:my="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Data" x:Class="DemoSL.Page"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Width="400" Height="300">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="0.15*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="0.25*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="0.60*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="5,5,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Width="76" Content="Show" x:Name="btnShow" Height="30" />
<TextBlock Margin="5,5,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Text="" TextWrapping="Wrap" x:Name="lblMsg" Height="22" Grid.Row="1" />
<my:DataGrid x:Name="dgEmployees" AutoGenerateColumns="True" Grid.Row="2"></my:DataGrid>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
Once the datagrid control is added to the Silverlight application, you should have a “System.Windows.Controls.Data” assembly added to your reference list. You should also observe the namespace “my” added to the “UserControl” tag.
Go to the code-behind of the “Page.xaml” and modify the code to look like the following:
Partial Public Class Page
Inherits UserControl
Public Sub New()
InitializeComponent()
End Sub
Private Sub EmployeeListFetched(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EmpService.GetEmployeeListCompletedEventArgs)
Me.dgEmployees.ItemsSource = e.Result
Me.lblMsg.Text = "Fetched!"
End Sub
Private Sub btnShow_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs) Handles btnShow.Click
Me.lblMsg.Text = "Fetching..."
Dim objService As New EmpService.EmpServiceClient
AddHandler objService.GetEmployeeListCompleted, AddressOf EmployeeListFetched
objService.GetEmployeeListAsync()
End Sub
End Class
Once you execute your Silverlight application, you should see the output as follows:
Fig 12
In my upcoming articles, we will see more and more examples of Silverlight 2.0 development. I hope you enjoyed the article and any suggestions, bugs, errors, enhancements etc. are highly appreciated at http://jagchat.spaces.live.com
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